Tales from the Toybox #3: Hellboy

A spotlight on Sideshow Collectibles' upcoming releases based on Guillermo Del Toro's film adaptation.

By Ken P.

If a collectibles company consistently puts out good work, people tend to take them for granted.

It's easy for collectors, fans, and geeks to be polarized by a company that completely botches a license, or one that manages to muster out a stellar treatment of a particular series even if the rest of their line is average.

Sideshow Collectibles, however, has managed to maintain a consistent level of quality that is quite rare in the collectibles market.

Here's the typical scenario: a cool collectibles company comes on the scene, makes a huge splash, fans go gaga and order stuff by the truckload, said company begins to let quality slide as they expand rapidly, fans begin to notice quality slide (as do licensors), and the company soon becomes a broken shell of itself until it finally fades away. Repeat ad infinitum.

Not so with Sideshow Collectibles.

Either with their 12" figure line, their polystone statues and busts, medallions, or their foray into prop replicas, the quality of the craftsmanship afforded to each release has been consistent right on down the line. Combine that with licenses both mighty and interesting (Lord of the Rings, The Simpsons, The Muppets, Buffy, Platoon, James Bond) and you have a collectibles company that has its eye on the ball.

In this edition of Tales from the Toybox, I wanted to key you in to a few releases (all currently available for pre-order) from Sideshow's latest licensing coup, Guillermo Del Toro's big screen adaptation of Mike Mignola's Hellboy. These items don't begin shipping till the Spring, but there's no better time to put your order in than the present - when that holiday cash is still in hand. If you wait too long, a lot of the items are sure to sell out (especially the limited pieces).

So why don't we start with Hellboy himself? The Deluxe 12" Version of our hero is available in a standard retail version ($45.00) and a Limited Edition Exclusive to the Sideshow website ($45.00), which features an alternate head sculpt (note the stogie clenched in mouth) and is restricted to a run of only 666 pieces.

Also available for pre-order is the incredibly cool looking Kroenen 12" figure, Hellboy's mysterious (and deadly) enemy. Again available in both a regular version ($40.00) and an Exclusive Final Battle version ($40.00), which will be an extremely limited edition of 750 pieces and feature 2 removable helmets with bug-like circular eye holes and a circular grill mouth plate.

While not yet available for pre-order, here are a few pics of the upcoming polystone busts of Hellboy and Abe Sapien&#Array;